Social England : a record of the progress of the people in religion, laws, learning, arts, industry, commerce, science, literature and manners, from the earliest times to the present day . at Gwennap. Improvements were made by Potter,Beighton, and Smeaton, the latter of whom made much morepowerful engines. One built by him at Chacewater in 1775 hadsteam cylinders 6 feet in diameter, and made a stroke of 9^, pumps were in three lifts of 100 feet each, and were 16finches in diameter. The cylinder weighed 6h tons, and was fedby three boilers. The engine was of 76 horse-power. In 17G7ther
Social England : a record of the progress of the people in religion, laws, learning, arts, industry, commerce, science, literature and manners, from the earliest times to the present day . at Gwennap. Improvements were made by Potter,Beighton, and Smeaton, the latter of whom made much morepowerful engines. One built by him at Chacewater in 1775 hadsteam cylinders 6 feet in diameter, and made a stroke of 9^, pumps were in three lifts of 100 feet each, and were 16finches in diameter. The cylinder weighed 6h tons, and was fedby three boilers. The engine was of 76 horse-power. In 17G7there were 57 engines at work near Newcastle of collectively1,200 horse-power; and Price, in 177S, says that Newcomensinvention had sent the miners twice as deep, though the engine THE PI^OGRESS OF MANUFACTURE. 427 1784] still left much to be desired. Every fire engine of magnitudeconsumes £3,000 worth of coals a year. Newcomens engineswere costly from several causes: the vacumn secured was farfrom perfect; the cylinder was unprotected and lost heat rapidly;but worst of all was the loss of heat due to condensation in thecylinder. In so vast a vessel much water was required—in fact,. XEWCOJIEXS EXGIXE. {Hnnterian Museum, GUmjov:.) the water-jet was usually worked with a 20-foot head—and thecostliness of alternately heating and cooling the cylinder foreach stroke was excessive. Faulty as the Newcomen engine was,yet it was not a toy. It did work, and that effectively, althoughexpensively. A great mistake is made in thinking that beforeWatt the steani-engine was of no use in industry. It waslimited to one use—pumping, and consequently mainly used mone industry—namely, mining, although the water pumped by Pottery and Porcelain. 428 AN ERA OF NEW DEPARTURES. [1742-1784 it might be used for other purposes, such, for example, asproviding a blast for furnaces. Pottery is chiefly associated with the name of JosiahWedgwood; but although he did very much to improve tasteand processes,
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